Conventional television or video on demand (“VOD”) systems (as well as conventional audio on demand (“AOD”) or music on demand (“MOD”), etc.) do not seem to currently track the amount of content that a user (or a plurality of users) actually view (or listen to) for any particular television or VOD content (or for any particular music content, etc.). Such conventional systems also do not appear to track partial consumption of media content (including video and/or audio content) for purposes of billing users for actual consumption of the media content; rather for subscription VOD or transactional VOD, the user must pay for the entire media content regardless of whether or not the user actually consumes the entire media content.
Further, conventional ratings track or the like do not appear to track the amount as well as the particular portions of particular media content that are actually consumed by each of a plurality of users. Such information, for example, could be used by content providers to improve production of future content, could be used by content distributors to improve distribution of future content better suited to the plurality of users, could be used by advertisers to better target ads to the plurality of users, and/or the like.
Hence, there is a need for more robust and scalable solutions for implementing media content tracking functionality, and, in particular embodiments, to methods, systems, apparatus, and computer software for implementing temporal markers for tracking at least partial playback of media content by users.